People who pre-ordered Wolfenstein: The New Order have been blasting their way around Doom’s closed beta since March 31. Soon everyone will be able to join them: open beta falls April 15-18, no codes required.

For the duration, you’ll be able to play Team Deathmatch and Warpath (a moving king of the hill mode) on the Heatwave and Infernal maps.

Three DLC packs will follow launch on May 13 and, depending on how Bethesda handles matchmaking between owners and non-owners, their contents may not be well received. The first pack which goes live in summer includes:

… Three new maps
… One new weapon
… One new playable demon
… One new armour set
… One new piece of equipment
… New hack modules and taunts
… New customization colours and patterns

Each DLC pack will cost $14.99 (£11.99 [UK]), or you can get them all at a discount with the Season Pass for $39.99 (£29.99 [UK]).

For the last month or so we’ve been watching as Blizzard first announced the name and theme of Hearthstone’s next big expansion – Whispers of the Old Gods, based around ancient eldritch tentacled horrors – and then slowly released the new cards we can expect to see burst forth from the new card packs. Now it seems that we have a release date too, thanks to a message that appears when attempting to purchase items that are rotating out of the new Standard format on the Battle.net store.

The new Standard is of course launching at the same time as Whispers of the Old Gods is, and will remove Naxxramas as well as its related cards and the GvG set from use in Standard although Wild will still allow for their use. The patch that comes out to let the new cards be used will also rebalance a lot of the Classic and Basic cards that have been around since the days of the Closed Beta tests. It really is going to be a day of massive changes.

Since April 26th is only 3 weeks away, expect to see card releases to speed up now and a massive one to happen just before release. Also prepare yourself for the release day itself; if it’s anything like the last few big releases the servers will probably fall over a few times before everything settles down.

Hey, at least it’s consistent enough for us to expect it to probably happen by this point.

As we get closer to the release of Hearthstone’s next big expansion, Blizzard keep releasing peeks at the new cards all over the Internet. These are the ones that were introduced to the public in the last two weeks, with a good number of new Legendaries seeing the light of day for the first time.

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Master of Evolution

Minion, 4 Attack, 5 Health, 4 mana cost.

Battlecry: Transforms another friendly Minion into a random one that costs 1 mana more.

Hallazeal the Ascended

Legendary Minion, 4 Attack, 6 Health, 5 mana cost.

Whenever your spells deal damage, heal your Hero for that much.

Thing from Below

Minion, 5 Attack, 5 Health, 6 mana cost.

Taunt

For each Totem summoned in this game, this Minion costs 1 mana less.

Undercity Huckster

Minion, 2 Attack, 2 Health, 2 mana cost.

Deathrattle: Adds a random class card from your opponent’s class to your hand.

Tentacle of N’Zoth

Minion, 1 Attack, 1 Health, 1 mana cost.

Deathrattle: Deal 1 damage to all Minions.

Spawn of N’Zoth

Minion, 2 Attack, 2 Health, 3 mana cost.

Deathrattle: Give your Minions +1/+1.

Faceless Shambler

Minion, 1 Attack, 1 Health, 4 mana cost.

Taunt

Battlecry: Copies a friendly Minion’s Attack and Health.

Infested Tauren

Minion, 2 Attack, 3 Health, 4 mana cost.

Taunt

Deathrattle: Summon a 2/2 Slime.

Cult Apothecary

Minion, 4 Attack, 4 Health, 5 mana cost.

Battlecry: Restores 2 Health to your Hero for each enemy Minion.

Skeram Cultist

Minion, 7 Attack, 6 Health, 6 mana cost.

Battlecry: Gives your C’Thun +2/+2 wherever it is.

Tentacle of N’Zoth

Dragon Minion, 2 Attack, 8 Health, 6 mana cost.

At the start of your turn, this Minion’s Attack doubles.

Mukla, Tyrant of the Vale

Legendary Minion, 5 Attack, 5 Health, 6 mana cost.

Battlecry: Add 2 Bananas to your hand.

Ancient Harbinger

Minion, 4 Attack, 6 Health, 6 mana cost.

At the start of your turn, take a 10-cost Minion from your deck and place it in your hand.

The Boogiemonster

Legendary Minion, 6 Attack, 7 Health, 8 mana cost.

Whenever this Minion attacks and kills another Minion, it gains +2/+2.

N’Zoth, the Corruptor

Legendary Minion, 5 Attack, 7 Health, 10 mana cost.

Battlecry: Summons all your Deathrattle Minions that have died this game.

Y’Shaarj, Tage Unbound

Legendary Minion, 10 Attack, 10 Health, 10 mana cost.

At the end of your turn, take a Minion from your deck and place it into the battlefield.

Vilefin Inquisitor

Murloc Minion, 1 Attack, 3 Health, 1 mana cost.

Battlecry: Your Hero Power becomes “Summon a 1/1 Murloc.”

Steward of Darkshire

Minion, 3 Attack, 3 Health, 3 mana cost.

Whenever you summon a 1-Health Minion give it Divine Shield.

Ragnoros, Lightlord

Legendary Minion, 8 Attack, 8 Health, 8 mana cost.

At the end of your turn, heal 8 Health to a damaged friendly Character.

Infest

Spell, 3 mana cost.

Give your Minions Deathrattle: “Deal 1 damage to all Minions.”

Cabalist’s Tome

Spell, 5 mana cost.

Add 3 random Mage Spells to your hand.

Shadow Word: Horror

Spell, 4 mana cost.

Destroys all Minions with 2 or less Attack.

Herald Volazj

Legendary Minion, 5 Attack, 5 Health, 6 mana cost.

Battlecry: Summon a 1/1 copy of all your other Minions.

Mark of Y’Shaarj

Spell, 2 mana cost.

Give a Minion +2/+2, if it’s a Beast draw a card.

Tentacle of N’Zoth

Minion, 1 Attack, 1 Health, 1 mana cost.

Battlecry: Equip a 1/3 Rusty Hook.

Tentacles for Arms

Weapon, 2 Attack, 2 Durability, 5 mana cost.

Deathrattle: Return this card to your hand.

Renounce Darkness

Spell, 2 mana cost.

Replaces Warlock Hero Power and class cards with those of another Class. The cards cost 1 mana less.

DOOM!

Spell, 10 mana cost.

Destroy all Minions, then draw a card for each.

Xaril, Poisoned Mind

Legendary Minion, 3 Attack, 2 Health, 4 mana cost.

Battlecry & Deathrattle: Add a random Toxin card to your hand.

Bloodthistle Toxin

Spell, 1 mana cost.

Return a friendly Minion to your hand, it costs 2 mana less.

Briarthorn Toxin

Spell, 1 mana cost.

Give a Minion +3 Attack.

Fadeleaf Toxin

Spell, 1 mana cost.

Give a friendly Minion Stealth until your next turn.

Firebloom Toxin

Spell, 1 mana cost.

Deal 2 damage.

Kingsblood Toxin

Spell, 1 mana cost.

Draw a card.

July last year (2015), Station manager Digmbot was stupidly excited for a new shoot ’em up, or shmup that he’d found on STEAM.

That was Steredenn and we’ve loved it on STEAM ever since, but a week ago the guys at Pixelnest (Thanks Damien) dropped us a review copy for Steredenn on XBox One and I had to yoink it before any of the team found out.

I love this game, it’s crazy hard but in a great way and makes you want to carry on killing the evil aliens and by evil I mean seriously, what other scifi game have you seen alien skips shaped like chainsaws?!?

The controls are perfect on the Xbox One, they are fluid and responsive, just as you’d expect them to be.

The graphics look lush for a pixel based game aswell, so much happens on screen you forget this is a pixel game.

But what really stands out in steredenn is the music, I would happily buy this soundtrack if I could (Please damien, if you read this review, drop me a copy for the station PLEASE!)

I can’t reccomend this game more, it’s the perfect example of this genre of game and very few have grabbed me since R-Type way back in the old days of my teens.

Steredenn gets a Super shmup 9 out of 10 from me!

~Lone

Steredenn is available on XBox One now for £10.39.

Ok, I’ll kick off this review by admitting I’m actually pretty bad at this game, I spent a couple of weeks trying and honestly, I’m just bad 😀

So, onto the review…

Bow we’ve been following Ironcast on PC since it was released on STEAM March 2015, roll on a year later and the XBox One version was released on the 9th of March.

At it’s heart, IronCast is a turn based gem collecting game, but calling it just that does it an incredible disservice. This is a roguelike tactical RPG if ever there was one.

Inspired by Victorian era science fiction writers such as H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. Ironcast is set in an exciting alternative history; a time when refined men and women in top hats and bonnets commanded gigantic walking war machines, laying waste to the enemies of the British Empire.

Take control of a 7 meter tall walking vehicle called an Ironcast and face off against an invading force of enemy Ironcast in order to defend 1880’s Victorian England. Battles are fought by generating resource nodes which in turn drive the Ironcast’s various weapons and systems. You must choose how to spend these nodes wisely, either offensively in order to cripple and destroy your opponents, or defensively, if they suspect a barrage of incoming weapons fire is due.

As the blurb says, you are the commander of an 1800’s era steampunk inspired steam tank/walker. You have to collect gems in your turn the correspond to ammo, coolant, etc, which you then use to move your mech, fire your weapons and/or raise your shields, but you never really have enough to do all of it.

The game is simple in idea, but in the execution, its easy to forget what you’ve done and as you’ll see in my twitch playthrough below, I regularly forgot to do something or simply ran out of what I needed to keep myself alive or attack the enemy. Now this could just be me, watching other streams, people are gettign the hang of it, but i also wonder if for me, the transistion from keyboard and mouse, to a single controller system is, for me, the downfall. Everything in the controller layout makes sense, and on screen the items are marked with the button that makes them work, but maybe it was too much for this old senile head to master.

That aside, I really enjoyed playing Ironcast and I love the steampunk vibe of the game.

The sound is also great too, the voice acting is a wonderful cockney British that makes me feel like I’m part of the game (it is my natural accent anyway) and the force feedback of the controller suited the sounds of the gun fire and moving mech perfectly too.

The leveling up and skill system seemed a little tricky to get to grips with and my main gripe while playing it on stream was some of the text is too small to read, even on my rather large tv in teh front room, something that would be less of a issue on a pc monitor you’d usually sit closer to.

As I said though, I enjoyed Ironcast and I will play it a lot more and it’s definitely worth £10, so head over to xbox.com or check your Xbox One’s store page!

~Lone

A Steam powered 6.5 out of 10!